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Frustrated by how expensive college counselors can be, two students in Loudoun County, Virginia, used artificial intelligence to launch a college prep website.
The website, called Opporly, gives students the chance to cover various parts of the college preparation process. Arjun Gayam and Sidharth Yenireddy, the website’s co-founders, said it costs about $70 per year. It already has 3,000 student users.
“Our goal is to get this in every high school in America, so that every high schooler has an equal opportunity to get into a college,” Gayam said.
They have both taken coding classes but are largely self-taught, using YouTube videos and Google searches to learn how to build the website.
The platform enables users to have the technology plan a passion project, find a professor to send an email to and help study for the SAT. The website also provides feedback on college essays, and Yenireddy said Opporly follows “all ethical guidelines for AI usage for college essays. Our AI gives them feedback, what they can improve and just some general thoughts on the essay.”
The website also has a college application tracker, so students can insert the programs they are applying to, when the deadlines are, whether they need financial aid and what the decision is.
For the passion planning component, Gayam said students can describe their interests and a timeline, and the AI will “put that together, give them a comprehensive plan, give them options and a timeline.”
The site has four business partners, Gayam said, and they all use the platform to post internship opportunities.
“For businesses, it’s a great place to find interns and other talent,” Yenireddy said. “And for students, it’s a pretty low-cost alternative to college counselors where they can get similar levels of help.”
Asked about skeptics who may want to navigate the process with a human instead of technology, Gayam said some people use a college counselor for opportunities, and the site addresses that by partnering with businesses to post opportunities.
The technology, meanwhile, “gives the students specific feedback on what they should do” when there are questions, such as whether to submit a certain Advanced Placement exam score with an application to some schools.
The pair, Gayam said, wants to spread the platform across the U.S., “so we can really level the higher education for all high schoolers.”
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